Wednesday, July 16, 2014

A Little-Known Natural Hazard

News Link
This story is from London where a crystal doorknob focused the sun's rays and started a fire.

Something similar happened in my house about 5 years ago.  My wife had a small makeup mirror with a stand in our bathroom.  It was a circular 2-sided mirror with a flat mirror on one side and a concave mirror on the other.  Every day about 2 PM I would smell smoke and could not figure out where it was coming from.  Finally, I looked in our bathroom and there was smoke coming from a small spot on the woodwork framing the window.  The afternoon sun came in a west facing window, hit the concave mirror sitting at about a 45 degree angle on the counter top, and reflected a focused light beam on the woodwork. Over a week's time it had burnt a hole about 1 inch in diameter and 1/2 inch deep - quite the repair job and quite lucky a fire didn't start!

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